but that cannot be so in our days when every one of its divine truths is mocked
and assailed.
“You call me a self-seeking fanatic, but if I be that, why are you yourself silent?
If I be misleading those who follow me, why are you, the true watchmen of Zion, not exerting yourself to lead them aright? I stand here the humblest of Danish pastors, a minister without a pulpit, a man reviled by the world, shorn of my reputation as a writer, and held to be devoid of all intelligence and truth.
Even so I solemnly declare that the religion now preached in our Danish church
is not Christianity, is nothing but a tissue of deception and falsehood, and that unless Danish pastors bestir themselves and fight for the restoration of God’s word and the Christian faith there will soon be no Christian church in Denmark.”
The immediate effect of this bold challenge was a stern reprimand from Bishop
Frederik Munter, accompanied by a solemn warning that if he ever again ventured to voice a similar judgment upon his fellow pastors, sterner measures would at once be taken against him. Besides this, his enemies raved, some of his few remaining friends broke with him, and H. C. Ørsted, the famous discoverer
of electro-magnetism, continued an attack upon him that for bitterness has no counterpart in Danish letters. In the midst of this storm Grundtvig remained self-possessed, answering his critic quite calmly and even with a touch of humor.
Although relentless in a fight for principles, he was never vindictive toward his personal enemies. In 1815, he published a collection of poems, Kvaedlinger, in which he asks, “Who knoweth of peace who never has fought, whoso has been
saved and suffered naught?” And these lines no doubt express his personal attitude toward the battles of life.
Being without a pulpit of his own, Grundtvig, after his return to Copenhagen, frequently accepted invitations to preach for other pastors. But as the opposition against him grew, these invitations decreased and, after the Roskilde affair, only one church, the church of Frederiksberg, was still open to him. Grundtvig felt his exclusion very keenly, but he knew that even friendly pastors hesitated to invite him for fear of incurring the disapproval of superiors or the displeasure of influential parishioners. And so, at the close of a Christmas service in the Frederiksberg church in 1815, he solemnly announced that he would not enter a
pulpit again until he had been duly appointed to do so by the proper authorities.
Grundtvig’s withdrawal from the church, though pleasing to his active enemies,
was a great disappointment to his friends. His services had always been well attended, and his earnest message had brought comfort to many, especially among the distressed Evangelicals. But others, too, felt the power of his word.
Thus a man in Copenhagen, after attending one of his services, wrote to a friend,
“that he had laughed at the beginning of the sermon and wept at its conclusion”
and that “it was the only earnest testimony he had ever heard from a pulpit.” And a reporter writing to a Copenhagen newspaper about his last service said, “Our
famous Grundtvig preached yesterday at Frederiksberg church to such a crowd of people that the church was much too small to accommodate them. Here were
people from all walks of life, and the speaker, we are convinced, stirred them to the bottom of their souls. Here was a Mynster’s clarity, a Fallesen’s earnestness, and a Balle’s appeal united with a Nordahl Brun’s manliness and admirable language.” And this about a man for whom his church had no room!
Thus Grundtvig instead of the friendly co-operation he had hoped for especially
from the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the people found himself virtually shut out from the circle to which he naturally belonged, and from the church he
loved, perhaps better than any man of his generation.
But if his hope of enlisting the leaders in a campaign to revive the spiritual life of the common people had been disappointed, his own determination to devote
his life to that purpose remained unshaken. If he could look for no help from the recognized leaders of his nation, he must somehow gain a hearing from the common people themselves. His personal contact with these, however, was rather slight. Except for his brief work as a pastor, he had so far spent the greater part of his life in intellectual pursuits quite removed from the interest of the common man. And the question was then how he, a man without any special position and influence, could reach the ears of his countrymen.
In searching for an answer to this question, he remembered the two things that
most profoundly had influenced his own spiritual outlook, his study of the traditions and history of his people, and his religious awakening in 1810. Was it not possible then that a like change might be engendered in others by presenting them with a picture of their own glorious past or, as his friend Ingemann later expressed it, by calling forth the generations that died to testify against the generation that lived? In presenting such a picture he would not have to rely on his own inventiveness but could use material already existing, foremost among
which were the famous Sagas of Norwegian Kings by Snorra Sturlason, and Denmark’s Chronicle by Saxo Grammaticus, the former written in Icelandic, and the latter in Latin.
When Grundtvig presented this plan to his remaining friends, they received it at once with enthusiasm and began the organization of societies both in Denmark
and Norway for the purpose of sponsoring its execution, in itself a most herculean task.
The two books contain together about fifteen hundred large and closely printed
pages and present a circumstantial account of the early mythological and factual history of the two nations. Even a merely literal translation of them might well consume years of labor. But Grundtvig’s plan went much farther than mere literal translation. Wishing to appeal to the common people, he purposed to popularize the books and to transcribe them in a purer and more idiomatic Danish than the accepted literary language of the day, a Danish to be based on
the dialects of the common people, the folk-songs, popular proverbs, and the old hymns. It was a bold undertaking, comparable to the work of Luther in modelling the language of the German Bible after the speech of the man in the
street and the mother at the cradle, or to the great effort of Norway in our days to supplant the Danish-Norwegian tongue with a language from the various dialects
of her people. Nor can it be said that Grundtvig was immediately successful in
his attempt. His version of the sagas sounds somewhat stilted and artificial, and it never became popular among the common people for whom it was especially
intended. Eventually, however, he did develop his new style into a plain, forceful mode of expression that has greatly enriched the Danish language of today.
For seven years Grundtvig buried himself in “the giant’s mount,” emerging only
occasionally for the pursuit of various studies in connection with his work or to voice his views on certain issues that particularly interested him. He discovered a number of errors in the Icelandic version of Beowulf and made a new Danish
translation of that important work; he engaged in a bitter literary battle with Paul Mueller, a leader among the younger academicians, in defence of the celebrated
